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www.independentweekly.com .au
30
The Independent Weekly
February 5 - 11, 2010
www.independentweekly.com .au
30
The Independent Weekly
$18
13.5% alcohol
Screw cap
93+
Pipers Brook Vineyard
Tasmania
Riesling 2009
$27.50; 13% alcohol;
screw cap
92+ points
Under the ownership of
the ancient Belgian hide
merchant (Kreglinger;
est. 1797), the maturing
Pipers Brook vineyards
set up by Dr. Andrew
Pirie in 1974 have
really begun to churn
out some flavour.
This riesling is at
once more aromatic
and Alsatian in style
than Clare or Eden
manages, and is more
crunchy and chalky
– perhaps even finer
and more tapered in
the finish – than SA’s
rapier steel versions. It’s
jammed with lovely tropical flowers and
fruits, from lantana through banana to
jackfruit. The palate has a perfect weight
about it, so it seems to occupy your
mouth rather than slide across it.
Marchand and Burch
Mount Barrow, WA
Pinot Noir 2008
$70; 13.5% alcohol;
screw cap;
94++ points
Jeff Burch, owner of
Howard Park and
Madfish Bay, has
dragged viticulturer
and winemaker Pas-
cal Marchand out of
Burgundy to show
his Margaret River
winemaking crew
how to make pinot
and chardonnay.
To back up the
release that smote
me last year,
they’ve really rung
the Bianco bell with
this sensual, supple,
earthy elixir. It’s almost
rotten with naughty cherries, satsuma and
dirty beetroot, and a neat little prickle of
smashed granite. The palate has a rude
conserve tone, but with fresh berries
atop, and a simmering well of terra cotta
below, glowering, daring the drinker to
slide right in.
d
;
rch
WA
ol;
st
thirst
Philip White http://drinkster.blogspot.com/
Treasury’s liquor trickery
Treasury wallah Ken Henry
has thrown a very tricky
handful of marbles under the
feet of the wine industry with his
recommendation that the current
scramble of alcohol taxes be
replaced with a simple excise.
For seasoning, he’s thrown
another handful under the
political dries who want to tax
kiddylikkers – and spirits – to
oblivion. With state and federal
elections brewing, we’re in for a
spat of extreme panic in Pollyville,
as the mighty grog lobbies get to
their nefarious work.
Wine is currently taxed on
the value of the unit sold, be
it bottle or bladder. Under an
excise, which is a tax on the total
alcohol each unit contains, the
cost of a $14 bladder pack would
double, to $31.07, while a $30 bottle
would fall to $27.53. These KPMG
figures would see your favourite
boutiques boom, and the Murray-
Darling Basin wine industry
collapse.
Never before has the gap
between the polarised wings of
the wine business looked wider.
But industry bodies, like the
Australian Wine And Brandy
Corporation, which is partly
funded by the taxpayer, are obliged
to represent everybody in the
business, so will have to protect
the bladder boyos, who produce
half the wine consumed, if not
made, in Australia.
These two ends of the business
have always been at war. It
was Brian Croser who went to
Canberra at the onset of the GST
and current messy regime and
organised the Wine Equalisation
Tax, which offered newly
disadvantaged small producers an
annual rebate. This writer argued
contentiously at that time that an
excise was the only clean, logical
manner of taxing alcohol. It was a
classic Aries versus Virgo riposte.
Croser came home touting his
deal as a great victory for the
entire industry. I argued that it
was terribly messy, and would
only postpone the inevitable col-
lapse of the discount bin business.
It would simply keep the huge
irrigating industrialists on side
with the tax-dodging doctors and
lawyers with ill-conceived hobby
vineyards. No doubt Croser had
discussed this at great length, over
many Bridgewater Mill lunches
with the likes of Alexander
Downer.
Not to mention folks like
Amanda Vanstone and Robert
Hill, who co-owned the relatively
tiny Amicus brand with Walter
Clappis. These guys had a very
heavy pull on John Howard’s wine
taxation philosophy.
An open, far-sighted mind
might see Henry’s proposal as the
perfect opportunity to cleanse the
big rivers of the scourge of an
industry which is in such gross,
nay, grotesque, oversupply to the
extent that it’s collapsing anyway.
This would release water to the
Murray mouth, and remove the
source of much of the alcohol con-
sumed as an alternative to sniffed
petrol in Aboriginal communities,
not to mention an unseemly slice
of the national health services
bill – skin colour aside.
It would also, according to
the Winemakers’ Federation of
Australia, result in the loss of
12,000 jobs. While the cynic might
argue that these jobs are going
anyway, the idea of the new tax
will fill many country electorates
with even more fear and depres-
sion.
The milder sceptic could
suggest that the discount wine
industry is in permanently deep
merde as long as the international
wine glut continues, and that any
movement which might lead to its
diminution is something healthy
which much be addressed.
Apparently Henry has stepped
his excise numbers: the brackets
would be 3.5 per cent alcohol and
below, then up to 5 per cent, 7 per
cent, 10 per cent, 15 per cent, and
above 22 per cent.
This would also favour the
premium wine lover who has
spectacularly, internationally,
turned away from the sorts of
dead-head alcohol bombs we’ve
been rotely making in the 12 years
since one American critic, Robert
Parker Junior, began to tout them.
While the wine blog explosion
has seen Parker lose some power,
the notion of an increased tax on
wines above 15 per cent would
surely be a strong incentive
to Australian winemakers to
return to healthier alcohols.
Sales of more modestly balanced
alcoholic wines should increase
internationally.
In the meantime, a relaxing
of the stifling tax laws and
regulations on distillation could
see a great deal of the wine glut
converted to industrial alcohol,
the income from which could
perhaps be devoted to funding
the next vine-pull scheme, which
seems increasingly imminent, and
would be likely to see a permanent
cessation of irrigating to produce
wines which sell for less than the
price of bottled water.
As for the price of alcopops fall-
ing from $3.30 per unit to $2.42 – and
at the risk of adding complexity
to Mr Henry’s pristine simplic-
ity – perhaps the excise should be
extended in the case of premixed
drinks to include an extra charge
on sugar and other sweeteners
when mixed with alcohol.
If caffeine was also included
in this kiddylikker, another hike
could be imposed. Banning such
cocktails is futile: anybody can
whup down three or four stiff
short blacks between sessions in
the boozer.
The milder sceptic could suggest that the
discount wine industry is in permanently deep
merde as long as the international wine glut
continues.
Maybe Ken Henry (right) could extend his booze tax plan to include an extra charge on sugar and caffeine in alcopops.